A Grammar of Madurese

Sound correspondences 23

(5) Madurese Indonesian Javanese
/parcaa/ [parcaɤ] /pəraja/ /pərcaja/ ‘believe’

/akɛn/^11 [ɤɛ] /jakin/ /jakin/ ‘sure’

/atɛm/ [ɤtɛ] /jatim/ /jatim/ ‘orphan’
/caa/ [cɤɤ] /aja/ /aja/ ‘victory’

/sɔrbaa/ [sɔrbɤɤ] /surabaja/ /surabaja/ ‘Surabaya’

In some cognates, Madurese has a voiceless aspirated /t./ or voiced /d./

retroflex where one finds /d/ in Indonesian. As spelled out by Stevens (1966),
this is attributable to the fact that Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *d was realized as
/d/ in Indonesian but either /t./ or /d./ in Madurese.

(6) Madurese Indonesian Javanese
/d.apa/ [d.ɤpa] /dapat/ (/ɔleh/) ‘arrive’

/d.atə/ [d.ɤtə] /data/ (/teka/) ‘come’

/sapɛḍa/ [sapɛḍɤ] /səpeda/ /səpeda/ ‘bicycle’
/t.ampɔl/ [t.ɤmpɔl] /dəmpul/ /dəmpul/ ‘putty’

/t.ɔɔ/ [t.ɔ] /dukun/ /dukun/ ‘traditional doctor’

2.2 Vowels

Many vowel correspondences between Madurese and Indonesian are quite regu-
lar because the quality of the Madurese vowel is conditioned by a rule of vowel
raising in which high vowels occur after aspirated and voiced stops and mid and
low vowels elsewhere. (The process and the limited exceptions are discussed
more fully in section 4). Because the surface form is more revealing in the case
of vowels, phonetic representations of Madurese and Indonesian are compared
here. These correspondences include instances in which Madurese has a mid
vowel because of the preceding conditioning environment. So, in some cases
the high vowel of the Indonesian corresponds to a mid vowel in the Madurese
cognate.

(7) Madurese Indonesian
[kɔcɛ] [kui] ‘cat’

[sapɛ] [sapi] ‘cow’
[kɛrɛm] [kirim] ‘send’
[tɔlɛs] [tulis] ‘write’

(^11) Many speakers currently pronounce this as [jakn], likely influenced by Indonesian or
Javanese.